Venture Capital: Business blogging on rise in Seattle

By JOHN COOK, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, September 15, 2005

Mobile Research founder David Adams started blogging eight months ago as a way to chronicle life inside his newly formed startup technology company. Now, the 36-year-old entrepreneur admits to occasionally suffering from "blog withdrawal" when he doesn't get time to post his comments at www.MobileStartup.com

Adams is one of a handful of entrepreneurs in the Seattle area who have turned to blogging -- online personal journals -- to help tell their stories, market their products and let off a little steam from the daily grind of starting a new company. Many of the blogs attract only a few hundred visitors per week, but the entrepreneurs say it is still a great way to get the message out and put the business in perspective.

"A blog is an ideal way of doing a brain dump on a daily basis of what is going on right now, the weird, the exciting and the awful things" said Adams, whose seven-person company conducts research on mobile phones. "I also wanted to have a record for myself, just for posterity."

Adams, who tries to post a comment at least once a day, writes with a friendly, and sometimes comedic, tone. He has described everything from the poor selection of swivel chairs at Costco to the noxious paint fumes in the company's new headquarters to the lack of heat in the office during late- night coding sessions. But Adams, who usually posts late at night while watching "The Daily Show" or in the morning at a local coffee shop, also describes the stresses of upcoming product launches and the benefits of profit sharing versus stock options.

"Anything goes," said Adams, who attracts about 3,000 visitors per month to the blog.

Jobster Chief Executive Jason Goldberg started his blog late last year as a way to record his entrepreneurial adventure, though the blog has morphed in recent months into a broader discussion of the online recruiting industry. On many days, he said, the Jobster blog receives twice as many visitors as the company's home page.

"It is fresh news and content is still king," Goldberg said, adding that the blog occasionally attracts as many as 5,000 visitors in a day. "When there is new content, people come back to read."

Goldberg said he views the blog as a personal conversation between him and the online recruiting industry. His only rule: "If I wouldn't say it to a reporter, I wouldn't say it on my blog."

That's also the rule for other Jobster employees, a half-dozen of whom are now writing blogs.

Goldberg spends 30 minutes to an hour each day on the blog. The former T-Mobile executive and aide to President Clinton said it is time well- spent.

"I think it is really important as a way to get the word out on things," he said. "I don't want to say it is a way to bypass the press, but it is a way to talk about things that you may not have reporters interested in writing about that day."

At first, M:Metrics co-founder Seamus McAteer was a bit reluctant to start a blog. He feared that it would become "stale" or would disrupt the company's more structured process of releasing information to the public.

"The blog thing just seemed a little bit more anarchic," he said. "Those were just concerns we had when we were launching, but it has served a purpose. It is a useful venue to get ideas out there."

McAteer, a long-time research analyst, said the blog has also helped create buzz for the company's research.

"People in the research business live and die by having their data referred to in the media and the press," said McAteer, whose Seattle company tracks the wireless data industry. "And guess what, now the media and press in the mobile industry get a lot of their information from blogs. It was really a pragmatic move."

McAteer said the blog, which was started in June with a focus on wireless trends, is a low-cost way to generate publicity. But even with the help of a colleague, McAteer said, he doesn't have time to post every day, typically spending about one to two hours a week on the blog.

"I am not that disciplined of a writer, I don't write to deadline very well," he said. "A daily blog would be just way too much work for me."

Other technology entrepreneurs have considered entering the blogosphere -- but they, too, say time constraints have prevented them from taking on the added responsibility.